Don't Run From Anything, Run Towards Everything

Sleep

I love to sleep, I can’t get enough of it, probably because I never get enough of it. I sleep like shit. Here are the Top 5 Reasons I Don’t Sleep (in no order):

1. The bar down the road is blasting music. They don’t close until 2 a.m. and they find it necessary to blast classic rock from speakers mounted on the roof, though everybody at the bar stays inside. Who can fall asleep while listening to ‘Paradise City”? I’m growing close to cutting the wires.

2. I can’t get comfortable. Sometimes it’s too cold. I wrap up the blankets, but then I’m too hot and I take off all my clothes. Then I start sweating and have no clue what’s going on. Perhaps it’s just the bed springs jabbing into my back. I’m going to sell my roommate’s possessions for a new bed.

3. My head won’t stop running. I’ve planned out six story lines for short stories while laying in bed once. Then it was 4 in the morning. I’ve also solved the problems of Quantum Non-Localization in the same fashion, but before 3.

4. I get bored. That’s right, I get bored of trying to fall asleep. Can anybody else lay claim to that? At this point I’ll usually pick-up a book because I’ve heard that helps, or else I’ll jerk-off because I’ve heard that also helps. Invariably I do both and neither helps.

5. I’m hungry. After several hours of laying in bed, pondering the Universe, planning stories and jerking-off, I tend to get hungry. I’ll roll around in bed and try to ignore it because I don’t feel like getting out of bed to go all the way downstairs to find something to eat. At some point, after an hour or so of rolling, I realize the futility and I succumb to the growls of my bowels and go find some food. Then it’s 4 in the morning.

My best night’s sleep comes after copious quantities of beer, but I’ve found that this method of self-induced unconsciousness usually has some unintended consequences when I try and move my head the next morning. Pot is always helpful, but I can’t really afford it all that often. I had a friend in high school who used to punch himself in the head until he would fall asleep, but I’m not to keen to that plan. Usually I’ll just roll around for several hours in that place between sleep and consciousness, where you simultaneously feel on the brink of deep sleep yet completely aware of your surroundings. This usually becomes some crazy lucid dreams, where it’s more like my conscious mind is directing some unconscious movie in my head. Then I see the light coming through the towel over my window. That’s usually when I fall asleep.